The Evolution of Bill Clinton

Sex and Power

by Richard Dawkins

Published in The Observer (London). Sunday, 22th Mar
1998

Why do men want to be rich, powerful and successful? It sounds a silly
question, but if science were always satisfied with the obvious we'd never
have got past Aristotle. Before Galileo, it was obvious that light objects
fall more slowly than heavy. Before Darwin, all sorts of things were obvious,
among them the 'commonsense' fact that men want to be rich and powerful.
But Darwinian selection works only to preserve genes, and riches and fame
don't obviously yield genetic gains. So there really is a question. To
approach the answer, we turn to the White House.

When Bill Clinton squares up to Saddam Hussein, one man has his hand
behind his back, fending off a squeaking, yapping pack of bimbos, lawyers
and both. It is his ironic misfortune to live in a culture that sees as
a crime actions which, in his opponent's culture, would be self-evident
grounds for praise and envy. To appreciate the absurdity of the situation,
try to imagine a CIA plot to discredit Saddam Hussein by implicating him
in multiple affairs with women. It could do nothing but gain him prestige.
In this respect, if no other, Islam shows some understanding of Darwinian
realities.

Darwinism is all about genes surviving in populations. Genes that build
the present generation survived through past generations. The Darwinian
insight follows: the genes that build the present generation were well
qualified to survive in ancestral worlds. To the extent that the
present resembles the past, today's genes will do well in the present.
This is why, as a convention, Darwinians interpret behaviour as 'aimed'
at the future 'goal' of survival and reproduction. But it is only a convention.
The fact is only that all creatures are built by genes that succeeded in
building ancestors. If present conditions depart from ancestral conditions,
individuals will behave in ways not well calculated to assist their genes.

In the excessive quantities that many of us enjoy it, sugar is a slow
poison. So why do we overeat the stuff? Because through most of our ancestral
history it was impossible to procure more than the small doses in which
sugar is good for you. People who liked sugar became ancestors, and it
is from ancestors that we get our genes. So we like sugar whenever we can
get it - and suffer dental caries and diabetes.

We lust, because our ancestors' lust helped pass their lustful genes
on to us. Here, as it happens, Darwinism agrees with commonsense: the convention
works. But sometimes the convention breaks down. If we are on the Pill,
or know that our sexual partner is, it doesn't diminish our desire. We
still inherit the ancient rule of thumb, now out of date. As Steven Pinker
says, in his splendid book How the Mind Works, "Had the Pleistocene
contained trees bearing birth-control pills, we might have evolved to find
them as terrifying as a venomous spider."

Genetic effects are often conditional. Genes have an 'IF Statement'
in their programming. Sex chromosomes apart, our genes have inhabited as
many female ancestors as male, and the best way for a gene to survive in
the two conditions is different. "IF you find yourself in a male body build
a penis, otherwise build a clitoris." "IF you find yourself in a female
body, build bigger breasts."

In species like seals and deer, where males hold large harems, it is
easier for a male than for a female to become a wildly successful reproducer,
but easier for a female to become a reproducer at all. Harem-holding males
pass a disproportionate share of genes on to the future, which leaves other
males passing none. Females are mostly harem members and their reproductive
success is middling, between the male extremes. Most individuals are descended
from a long line of harem-owning males and an equally long line of harem-belonging
females. We can therefore expect IF Statements that read: "If you find
yourself in a male body, assume that it is a member of the elite, or work
hard to make it so." Modern males might be particularly aggressive, because
past males that fought fiercely won harems and became ancestors. Females
became ancestors whether they won fights or not. A male's offspring count
is highly correlated with his mate count. For all sorts of reasons (for
instance ,while pregnant you can't get pregnant again) the same is less
true of a female.

Not all species are like seals and deer. Some form monogamous pairs.
The difference is an economic one. 'Wealth' (for example being a big 'landowner'
as in a male bird who successfully defends a large territory) is attractive
to females because wealth translates into offspring survival. Species whose
food supplies, or other important goods like nesting territories, are easily
monopolisable, tend to become 'polygynous' (rich males hold harems of females
forcing poor males to be celibate). There is a 'polygyny threshold', a
threshold level of wealth inequality, at which a female is marginally better
off as the second wife of a rich male than she would be as the only wife
of a poor male. In species with the possibility of extreme wealth-inequality,
very large harems are built up by very few males. Monogamous mating systems
typify species whose economic goods are by their nature difficult to hog.
Even the richest male is not so different from the poorest as to tempt
a female to become his second wife.

And what of humans? Did our wild African ancestors live in harems like
seals and deer? Or are we, like many songbirds, among nature's monogamists?
Indirect clues suggest a leaning towards the harem. First, men tend to
be larger than women, a pattern unsurprisingly typical of polygynous mammals.
Second, a worldwide ethnographic survey of 849 human
societies showed 708 whose customs are polygynous (more than one wife),
four polyandrous (more than one husband) and 137 monogamous. Third, psychological
evidence shows males typically seeking sexual variety, attracted by physical
indicators of female fecundity such as youth and blooming health; while
females are drawn to indicators of male wealth or
wealth-gaining potential, including power - Henry Kissinger's 'ultimate
aphrodisiac.'

The Darwinian anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon has made a lifelong study
of the Yanomamo of the Amazon jungle, one of the few tribes that retain
our ancestral hunter-gatherer way of life. The Yanomamo call themselves
'the fierce people', and violent and lethal fighting is rife. To quote
the distinguished biologist E.O.Wilson, "One quarter of all Yanomamo men
die in battle, but the surviving warriors are often wildly successful in
the game of reproduction. The founder of one bloc of villages had forty-five
children by eight wives. His sons were also prolific, so that approximately
75% of all of the sizable population in the village bloc were his descendants."
When Chagnon asked a Yanomamo man why they fought, the question provoked
astonishment: "What? Don't ask such a stupid question! It is women! Women!
We fight over women!"

The Darwinian historian Laura Betzig has shown that, both in the Roman
Empire and in medieval Christendom, though marriage was monogamous,
mating was often polygynous. A Lord of the Manor would have one
wife. But his household was set up as an unofficial harem of servant girls
and other lower-class young women who found in the manor a haven from poverty.
The 13th Century Count Baudoin was typical in siring 23 bastards. His bedchamber
"had access to the servant girls' quarters, and to the rooms of adolescent
girls upstairs. It had access, too, to the warming room, 'a
veritable incubator for the suckling infants'." In the 12th century,
Giselbert of Mons found it 'risible' that a certain count, in spite of
his opportunities, was faithful to his wife. The monasteries were also
big landowners, and Betzig unearths parallel accounts of the sexual exploits
of their abbots and monks.

In our society we think of lifelong monogamy as the norm, or at least
the ideal. A numerical majority of societies of the world, past and present,
might think it aberrant, and it is plausible that our wild ancestors would
have responded to Clinton's predicament - having to defend himself
against a charge of consorting with several women - with open-mouthed
incredulity. What else does a man become a great chieftain for?
(Yes, yes, I know Clinton is officially accused of lying about it rather
than doing it, but our ancestors would have laughed just as much at the
social mores that make it necessary for a great chief to lie about
such things). If John F. Kennedy really copulated with as many women as
is now claimed, including the widely coveted Marylin Monroe, our ancestors
would have expected nothing less of so illustrious a chief. As for Lloyd
George . . .

I must throw in the usual health-warning. 'Is' does not mean 'ought'.
I do not long to return to ancestral ways. I'd hate to live in a hunter-gatherer
world where men fight over women, or in any polygynous culture where a
woman is a man's chattel rather than companion or colleague. With pleasure
I take the un-Darwinian personal decision to live as a deliberately monogamous
individual. But I am not happy to live in a sanctimonious, lawyer-driven
society that tries to bring down a man for doing in private what many men
would secretly emulate if they had his opportunities.

Of course I find something unpleasant in the abuse of power over employees
and underlings. But, once again, that is a western, modern perception of
what is going on, something that would provoke hoots of derision from Clinton's
Arab opponents. As for the charge of mendacity, by all means let us have
leaders that are truthful in great affairs of state. But in small affairs
that are the business only of a man, his wife, and the other individuals
involved, it is a prying society that compels him to lie by not allowing
him to say "That is none of your business." Ironically it becomes society's
legitimate business only when, as in Profumo's case, sexual indiscretion
compromises state secrets and threatens to expose lies told in the interests
of national security.

To return to our opening question, why do men strive to become rich
and powerful, instead of concentrating on reproduction like good Darwin
machines? 'Instead' arises only in an eccentric minority of societies.
Wealth, power and worldly success once translated directly into wives and
grandchildren, and in many societies they still do. But in our society
they are pursued in their own right alone, like the taste for unlimited
sugar long after the translation rules have changed. Men today seek wealth
and power because wealth and power among our ancestors, in all kinds of
direct and indirect ways, bought genetic survival. The rule of thumb has
outlived its Darwinian usefulness. Bill Clinton is a beached tribal chief,
washed high and dry in the land of lawyers.